Early years
On October 16, 1841 (2nd day of the 9th month, TenpĆ 12), ItĆ Hirobumi was born to Hayashi JĆzĆ and his wife Kotoko in the village of Tsukari in Kumage county, SuĆ province (now Hikari city, Yamaguchi prefecture). His childhood name was Risuke. They were a farming family, but to support the household his father served a man named ItĆ in the castle town of Hagi. When Hirobumi was still very young, his whole family was adopted into and given the name of the ItĆ family. After the adoption, Hayashi Risukeâs name was changed to ItĆ Risuke, and later to ItĆ Shunsuke (1858) and then to Hirobumi (around 1869). Becoming part of the ItĆ family brought them into the samurai class, albeit at the bottom level. The head of the adoptive ItĆ family was Naoemon, a low-ranking retainer (chĆ«gen) of the Choshu domain. The categorization of families immediately following the 1868 Meiji Restoration identified low-ranking families like the ItĆs as âsotsuzokuâ as distinct from other former samurai houses known as âshizoku.â
Yoshida ShĆin and ShĆka Sonjuku
In 1856 (Ansei 3), ItĆ Hirobumi was sent by the ChĆshĆ« domain to Sagami province on guard duty at Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay). There, in the second month of 1857 (Ansei 4), Kuruhara RyĆzĆ (1829â62) was assigned to head the guard at Sagami. A younger brother-in-law of Kido Takayoshi (KĆin; 1833â77), one of the leading figures in the Meiji Restoration, Kuruhara liked ItĆ and took good care of him, and the encounter was to greatly influence ItĆâs career.
A letter home affords a glimpse into ItĆ as a knowledge-hungry teenager with high aspirations. He wrote, âKuruhara RyĆzĆ-sama, my superior, has been introducing me to some reading matter and I have been working particularly hard these days.â1 A smile-provoking passage at the end of the letter reads:
This is a personal thing, but I am embarrassed that my clothes have become too small. Please tell this to Grandma [ItĆâs adoptive grandmother] and Mother. I am also a big eater, another embarrassment. Iâs afraid both of these make me a laughing stock.2
In the ninth month of the same year, ItĆ was released from his assignment and he returned to ChĆshĆ« carrying a letter of introduction to the scholar, political reformer, and activist Yoshida TorajirĆ (1830â59; widely known as ShĆin, one of his literary names), written by Kuruhara. In Hagi, ItĆ visited ShĆin and requested that he be allowed to study under the great teacher at his private academy, ShĆka Sonjuku (âvillage school under the pinesâ). Some time after he was admitted, ItĆ wrote to a friend with whom he probably became acquainted while on guard duty in Sagami province. The two apparently had trained together under Kuruhara. Vividly expressing the intellectual excitement he felt about his studies and all around him at the academy during his early days there, ItĆ wrote,
Literature is flourishing here. There is no one who is not always reading something. All of Matsumoto village is alive with our academy ShĆka Sonjuku. We students read day and night. I urge you, too, to keep reading and studying. I donâs for a moment think you are neglecting your studies, but I do believe it is very important.3
ShĆka Sonjuku was a tiny private academy far from Kyoto or Edo, but it produced many of the determined and capable activists (later known as shishi) who became major players in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restora-tion of the emperor to the center of government. Among them were Kusaka Genzui (1840â64), Takasugi Shinsaku (1839â67), Maebara Issei (1834â76), Yamagata Aritomo (1838â1922), and also ItĆ Hirobumi. What kind of relationship did ItĆ have with his teacher ShĆin? We can begin to formulate an answer by considering the death of ShĆin, who was eventually imprisoned for treason, taken to Edo, and executed in the Ansei Purge of 1858. ItĆ happened to be in Edoasanatten dantto Kido Takayoshi . It was ItĆ, Kido, and a few others who retrieved Yoshida ShĆinâs body and gave him a proper funeral.
One can imagine the shock experienced by the young and sensitive ItĆ upon learning of the execution and seeing the dead and cold headless body of the teacher he had respected so deeply. From that point, working behind the scenes, he became deeply involved in the movement fired by ChĆshĆ« activists to forcibly rid Japan of the presence of Western powers and overthrow the shogunate. He had a part in an abortive attempt in 1862 to assassinate Nagai Uta (1819â63), a high-ranking ChĆshĆ« official.4 Late that year a band of activists organized by Takasugi Shinsaku burned the British legation then under construction at Gotenâyama in Shinagawa, Edo. ItĆ took part in that act of arson, and a few days later, together with Yamao YĆzĆ (1837â1917),5 he assassinated Japanese classics scholar Hanawa JirĆ Tadatomi (1808â62), son of the eminent scholar Hanawa Hokiichi, believing a false report that Hanawa was seeking ancient precedents for dethroning an emperor. Among all the prime ministers of Japan, ItĆ is the only one known to have killed a person outside the battlefield (except Kuroda Kiyotaka [1840â1900], who was rumored to have beaten his wife while drunk, resulting in her death).
Figure 1.1 Yoshida ShĆin (1830â59).
Source: Photograph courtesy of the National Diet Library of Japan.
Teacher and student: mutual admiration
For a period following ShĆinâs death, ItĆ was unmistakably a terrorist. Fueling his acts of violence was the sonnĆ jĆi ideologyââRevere the emperor, expel the barbarians [Westerners]ââpreached by ShĆin during the years prior to his early death. This was an exhortation to overthrow the shogunate by force. The leaders of the ChĆshĆ« domain would have none of it, and so ShĆin turned to dissident, out-of-power sympathizers to build a movement that he believed would rise like a flood tide for revolution. This, ShĆin eagerly hoped, would be the grassroots uprising (âsĆmĆ kukkiâ) that would turn the tide. ItĆ was right there in the thick of the movement. Yet, there was a vast difference in temperament between teacher and student. Even while he sympathized with ShĆinâs ideology, ItĆ kept a discreet distance from his teacher while the latter was alive.
ShĆin described ItĆ as a âshĆ«senka,â a negotiator.6 He also said about ItĆ, âHe is of a petty official rank but enjoys himself with his colleagues. He is not very talented and is slow in learning. But he is serious-minded and modest. I like this very much.â7 ShĆin saw ItĆ as a diligent and cheerful student and an untalented, simple, and honest son of a low-ranking foot soldier. As suggested by this appraisal, ShĆin might have thought ItĆ able to become a competent bureaucrat skilled at negotiating. He most likely did not consider ItĆ capable of leading the management of the state.
How did ItĆ remember his teacher? In his later years he described ShĆin as being âin no way an advocate either of expelling Western influences or overthrowing the shogunate,â but, ItĆ said, âHe was extreme. He sometimes did things at his own discretion without realizing the real intentions of the ChĆshĆ« government, thus getting the government into trouble.â ShĆin was like âthe head of a political party today,â ItĆ observed, and added that the anti-Western âexpel-the-barbarians ideology of those days was entirely emotional; it had nothing to do with thoughtful political calculations.â8
In the same account ItĆ commended Nagai Uta (in whose abortive assassination plot he himself had taken part all those years before) for his sharp insights:
Nagai believed Japan should be unified at all costs. Regardless of whether it opened its doors or kept them closed, the nation first needed to unite the imperial court and the shogunate and then decide which way to go. Otherwise Japan would never be either a genuinely open or genuinely closed country. In any case, Nagaiâs primary objective was to bring together all of Japan as a nation.â
ItĆ concluded that Nagai âsaw through things very clearly for a man of those days.9 ItĆ saw in Nagai a man whose âpolitical strategyâ was decisively informed by level-headed deliberation on the future of Japan, and he found more sympathy with this than with the radical idealism of ShĆin. These recollections are clear testimony to the character of ItĆ as a statesman. It is safe to say that, as in his commendation of Nagai, what ItĆ meant by âpolitical strategyâ was not clever tactical maneuvering but thoughtful consideration of policy. ItĆ was a thinker who, while keeping to his political ideals, worked tirelessly to reconcile the competing interests of the various forces in play in his time and took pains to ensure that nothing he ever did or said could be construed as coming from irrational idealism. In that sense, ItĆ and ShĆin were of two entirely different minds that could not possibly understand each other. ItĆ began to truly find himself only after he had broken free of ShĆinâs influence.
Smuggled out to Britain
Having been introduced to the world of learning by Kuruhara and ShĆin, ItĆ was eager for more. His next big step was to somehow get to Britain, but anti-Western feeling in Japan was at a peak and the official policy of seclusion was still in effect, so leaving the country involved subterfuge. One such project underway in the ChĆshĆ« domain was a secret plan to send retainers to study in the West. Sufu Masanosuke (1823â64), a high official in the domain government, believed their objective was to prepare the country:
I think ChĆshĆ« needs tools. By âtoolsâ I mean human tools. Considering all that is happening in our country today, many domains are actively supporting the movement to restore the emperor to the seat of government and exclude Westerners from the land, but much of that activity is just a show of the valor of Japan. The day is sure to come when there will be active interaction among countries. When that time comes, if we still know little of things Western then our country will be at a serious disadvantage. In order to prepare the tools we need to use on that day, I want to send Nomura Yakichi and Yamao YĆzĆ to Britain.10
Ordered by the domain leaders to become human âtools,â prepared to absorb...